I’m not sure if they are called klieg lights, search lights, spot lights or flood lights, but I’m interested in getting information on those big, rotating floodlights used at, say, car dealers or grand opening events.
Can anyone provide a link–or at least specs as to candlepower/lumens, cost, general capability? How are they powered? Who sells/rents them?
thanks.
googled searchlght rental. This is the best I found. no posted prices I’ve seen.
Wow, cool link, Yojimboguy.
I look after 2 GE 1940 60-inch searchlights, just like the one illustrated on the page linked by Yojimboguy.
Country Squire, the carbon-arc light works pretty simply; you have a postively-charged carbon rod and a negatively-charged rod inside a parabolic dish mirror. You bring them to just the right distance apart, and bingo–a very, very intense blue-white light from the electricity arcing between the two rods. The parabolic dish reflects and magnifies the light, and bounces it out in a 1-degree beam, which on a clear, dry night has a range of 10 miles. These are “direct beam” searchlights, the kind used during the war for seeking out enemy aircraft, or bounding off low cloud to create “artificial moonlight” for night land battles. These were also used by the coast artillery in the USA, Canada and the UK for spotting enemy ships (or as static “sentry beams”).
There is another variety–same in every respect, except for slatted glass lenses which break up the beam, and act as a 45-degree floodlight to light up a whole harbour mouth. These were known as “dispered Beam,” or “fighting lights.”
I’ll have to check at work on Monday about amperage, etc., but the 800 million candlepower figure quoted on the rental page is correct. I’ve interviewed a number of ex-coastal searchlight operators, and they told me that they were issued welder’s goggles to wear while looking through a little peephole in the side of the body of the searchlight, to check that the 2 rods were aligned properly. The electric arc burns hot and bright, and the carbon rods burn down, so the central burner has clockwork mechanisms to simultaneously rotate and advance the two rods (quite slowly, to maintain the correct gap and angle).
The local coast artillery nicknamed the searchlight operators “the glowworms.” They used to kid new recruits that the lights were so powerful that they could knock over small boats!